Excerpt from ‘The Novel Teacher’

This is a sneak preview from our up-coming Going Down Swinging #33 from Eric Yoshiaki Dando’s short story The Novel Teacher. We will be launching the new GDS #33 on Sunday 2 September at the Toff in Town with an amazing line up of performers.

I AM A TWICE-FAILED NOVELIST TEACHING WRITING in a university course called Novel Writing. The thing I notice most is how bad the coffee is. It is cheap and bitter and the wrong colour. I am just like this coffee, I write in my journal. I haven’t written anything in weeks. I was writing my third novel but it is useless. None of the big publishing houses are interested in me now. I am only pretending to be a writer.

The coffee is all I have to look forward to. I am not even sure if it gives you a hit. When I drink too much it makes me sweat and I talk too quickly. It makes me shit. It gives me cottonmouth and hideous breath. I don’t drink enough water. All I drink is coffee and Coca-Cola and beer. All I eat is bread and bacon with a little bit of lettuce and an apple every couple of days. I chew on my nails. My hair is falling out in the shower. I am about to have a heart attack. None of my students would fuck me. I think I am miserable.

Sometimes I notice my students taking a step back when I am talking to them in the line to buy more coffee. It is because I have gassed them with my breath. I keep drinking this coffee and trying to put some small ray of sunshine in my day. It is no use. The coffee will not work, it doesn’t matter how much of it you drink…

Read the full story in Going Down Swinging #33, to be released Sunday September 2, 2012. Launch tickets here.